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High River Youth and Young Adult Clinic to close at end of month

Weekly clinic at Charles Clark Medical Centre offers sexual and mental health walk-in services for young patients up to 27 years old.
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The Charles Clark Medical Centre, which houses the High River Young Adult Clinic, in High River.

A High River clinic that offers sexual health and wellness services and mental health counselling sessions to teens and young adults is set to close.

The High River Young Adult Clinic operates out of the Charles Clark Medical Centre every Tuesday from 2-6 p.m. and offers several walk-in services for young patients up to 27 years old, including birth control, STI testing, pregnancy testing and emergency contraception, education on birth control, STIs, healthy relationships and drug awareness. 

Patients also have the ability to book appointments for mental health counselling sessions to deal with anxiety, depression or reduction of stressful circumstances. 

All services are provided for free, with or without a health card. 

An NDP-issued press release last week stated that a physician at the clinic was told it could no longer be funded in its current form. 

"The clinic will be closing on March 31, and did not have sufficient time to change the funding structure of the clinic to provide continuity of care for her patients, including LQBTQ2S+ and Indigenous patients," the statement read. 

“There are currently no family physicians in our community accepting new patients, and many of them would still require additional support provided by our clinic. I do not know where they will be to meet their needs, given the already unstable state of primary care in Alberta,” Dr. Jennifer Norheim said in the release. 

In an email statement, Ministry of Health press secretary Scott Johnston said that there isn't a government funding reason for the Calgary Rural Primary Care Network (PCN) to make the decision to close the High River clinic. 

"The decision to close the clinic for youth and young Albertans was made by the local Primary Care Network, not Alberta Health Services or the Government of Alberta," he said. "Local decisions are best made at the local level." 

According to Johnston, the health minister and the mental health and addictions minister have been tasked with looking further into the situation to ensure primary care and mental health services for youth continue to be available. 

He added that teens and young adults can access necessary services through AHS public health clinics and their local family physicians. 

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